edWeb’s Emerging Tech Hosts 50th Webinar

edWeb’s Emerging Tech community hosts 50th webinar thanks to Follett’s ongoing support

50th ETedWeb.net’s first professional learning community Emerging Tech: Using Technology to Advance Your School Library Program hosted its 50th webinar in August thanks to the ongoing support of Follett. The 50th webinar Google Apps for Education had 1,475 registrations, 540 live attendees, and over 640 views so far.

Emerging Tech is a professional learning community (PLC) where school librarians can explore all the ways to integrate technology and 21st century learning into school library programs. The community launched in July 2010 with host and presenter Michelle Luhtala, head librarian at New Canaan High School in CT. Lisa Schmucki, founder and CEO of edWeb.net, got the idea of integrating webinars into online community while attending a presentation by Michelle at a CoSN conference in March of 2010. Since then, the Emerging Tech community has grown to over 7,000 school librarians.

Lisa Schmucki commented, “Michelle Luhtala and I worked together to develop Emerging Tech community and webinar series, and we received a lot of help from the first school librarians who joined the program. It was a truly collaborative effort. The model we created for free online professional learning has spawned more than 35 other programs on edWeb.net and has been recognized in a growing number of publications. The story of how we developed the program is included in the book, Growing Schools: Librarians as Professional Developers. We could not have done this without the support of Follett who supported the idea from the beginning.”

Michelle Luhtala added, “I am honored to facilitate this kind of professional learning. The Emerging Tech community helps me grow as a teacher, a librarian, and a technology integrationist. I am deeply grateful to Lisa and Follett for making this community possible.”

School librarians and media specialists are invited to join the community at www.edweb.net/emergingtech.

The next webinar will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 17 at 5 p.m. Eastern Time RU Ready 2 Trust ’em? Why Access is Essential to Developing Citizenship among Millennials.